Organized…

Over the years I have become known as being extremely organized. I like to say that I am freakishly organized.

This is our current laundry room/family closet.

People ask, “Have you always been this organized?” The answer is…NO. My mom and dad would be happy to confirm that for you. I am not joking when I tell you I had a mouse living in my messy closet as a kid.

With the addition of each child, a bit more organization has been added. I’ve learned that the organization of stuff can bring greater freedom and less structure to our time. As odd as it may sound, we are organized but not highly scheduled as far as our time. We are a combination of both organized and very laid back, which does not seem to be a typical combo.

Our children do scatter toys, crafts, bugs (yes – bugs – I swear they are obsessed bug lovers) and all sorts of stuff all over our house every day. If you randomly show up around 10:30AM, you’ll find stuff strewn everywhere. If you show up a little after 11:00AM, you’ll wonder how on earth we keep our house so tidy. We live life and enjoy stuff, and we have a couple times a day where we put everything away. Most everything does have a place where it belongs.

We have this big closet. It’s semi-organized and a chaotic catch-all as well. This is looking really good compared to last week. I’ve been going through all our memory related items such as photo albums, art, birthday cards, first haircuts, etc. I’m organizing it all into separate bins for each child. As I get things situated, we are slowly moving our important keepsakes over to our storage unit.

Side note: This photo was taken on Sunday afternoon. Half of us, including me, jump into our pajamas the second we walk into the door after church. The other half want to wear their cute clothes as long as possible.

We are using all this time while we await a buyer for our house to downsize and prepare as much as possible for the moment when we hit the road and are truly rolling by the dozen.